Vision

From an early age, the world and its diversity fascinated me, especially the patterns I saw in commonplace things. I soon realized that this beauty that I had found would dull with time, as experience after experience would crowd my memory. My interest in photography stemmed from a desire to immortalize this moment of recognition to relive this emotion repeatedly and forever. Life on the farm was dominated by monotonous expanses of fields and pastures. The things that really excited me, though, were the abstracts I could form from farm implements, keyholes in doors, cracked paint, and other minutia I found close to hand. Though my professional studies and career took me down the road of science and mathematics, my camera was never far from my hand. The knowledge that I acquired allowed me to look “under the hood” at both the truth and uncertainties underlying nature, which are a form of mysticism. With the camera, I attempt to integrate these two worlds: the surface beauty with the underlying unseen complexity of what the subject is and how it came to be. Always drawn by the excitement of discovery, I have exactly the same feeling discovering an object to photograph as I do in making a discovery in the laboratory. Seeing something that is ever-present yet which no one else has recognized is always accompanied by a rush of excitement and wonder. For both of these, the responsibility then becomes finding the means to convey this new vision to the viewer, either of the laboratory discovery or of the photograph. This is my goal. To discover overlooked beauty. I delight in this sharing as so I diligently seek out these elusive patterns in nature. Small objects have grandeur just as large scenic vistas do. These speak to me and in return, I contemplate, sometimes resulting in a photograph. The photograph then becomes the time machine with which I transport myself back to that moment of discovery, allowing viewer to share in this revelation.